Interview · Viva La Musica
February 2025
(texte original en Français ici)
Johann Bourquenez's confessions, musician and AMR communication manager
Geneva resident by adoption, Johann Bourquenez played for ten years with the trio Plaistow. He is now the interim communications manager at AMR — working alongside Martin Wisard. An opportunity to learn more about the musician working behind the scenes, who's been behind the newsletters and Sud des Alpes social media posts since the start of 2024.
---Where are you from?
I was born in 1976 in Besançon, north of the Jura about 150 km from Geneva. I didn't come to Switzerland when I was in Besançon. Despite the relative proximity, it was another world, a gray spot on the map. I left for Toulouse in 1997 to attend a jazz school, Music Halle. Then I played with several groups, trying to link electronic music, drum'n'bass, techno, hip-hop, and jazz.
After a six-month trip to China, which would be too long to describe, I returned to France, to Paris. I passed through Geneva and Bern at the end of 2006 for improvisation concerts (Tlön 5, piano-sax duo). I played and was hosted at Clos Voltaire, which was half-squat, half-student housing from Cigüe, and I liked it — the house, the city, the people, the parties, the accent, the smell of the lake, the fondue. I went back and forth with Paris before subletting a room here at the beginning of 2007.
Then I did sessions with Cyril Bondi on drums, for what would become the trio Plaistow, and he brought me to AMR. I came back to practice piano. At some point, I realized I was living for almost nothing in this expensive city, and that I could decide to practice piano every day for hours. And that if I didn't do it, it was a personal choice, but not a lack of means. I partied a lot, big decadent parties, but I slowed down the pace and chose the piano.
Music — who made you want to do it?
I wanted to play violin at age 5, after hearing a classical quartet at school. I remember thinking something like "ah, so that's called 'music'!" I did five years at the conservatory, then stopped. There was a piano at home and I always tinkered around on it. In a way, I always felt like a musician, but I really struggled to inscribe that into a personal and social reality.
Where did your childhood dreams go?
Well, I've done hundreds of concerts, I've been applauded, I've recorded albums, I've watched the landscapes of Europe and Asia through the windows of taxis taking me to hotels or airports, and I still love walking or cycling and telling myself stories that start from nothing. I think the child is still there.
Which musicians do you consider masters?
There are many, in all kinds of styles... For piano, let's mention Craig Taborn and Marc Copland. There are artists I've listened to encyclopedically: Squarepusher, Meshuggah, Jacques Brel, John Coltrane...
What's on your bedside table?
Two books: *When Nature Collapses* by Alexandre Génin, a small book that explains the current state of knowledge in ecology about ecosystem state changes, basically why there are abrupt changes caused by linear variations. And *The Other Girl* by Annie Ernaux, a short novel, 2022 Nobel Prize winner in literature, lent by my girlfriend, but I haven't started it yet — that's bad.
The return of cassettes, but why?
So, long version: I left Geneva in 2017. Environmental questions, CO2 and ecology were torturing me a lot, and I looked for ways to be more in sync between the state of the world and my little life. I spent two years in Marseille where I notably campaigned for climate action, organized conferences on collapse, and learned how to make a vegetable garden — which was no small feat, because as a good urbanite, I knew practically nothing. I became vegetarian. And I also started learning guitar, after a year and a half without playing a single note of music. Then five years in Drôme, in Loriol, where I continued cultivating and playing guitar. I even did small concerts as a guitar-vocal duo in the region.
Then I got back into piano. The city, its lights and concerts started calling to me. I hesitated between Paris and Berlin, went to check them out. Ah! People! Avenues! Experimental concerts where people speak English, similarities between Loriol and some backwater in Canada... And on a train ride back, I passed through Geneva. Literally every fifteen minutes, I ran into someone I knew. I found myself doing some scales on the basement piano, then in the concert hall. I felt good in this city again. I want to say it clearly: I love Geneva. I know there are traps, false appearances, impossibilities, I know you can feel trapped and sink into it like sinking into a black hole, but I love this city. I told myself that what I wanted was to be able to practice and record piano in good conditions, and that in Geneva I already had a whole network that allowed me to do that — I had just forgotten it a bit.
I went back and forth with Loriol, started giving lessons, and then recorded a solo piano album myself, on a Sunday in AMR's concert hall.
Here I have to talk about Renaud Millet-Lacombe, a brilliant sound engineer I worked with for years on Plaistow's records. He hosted me during this whole period. I listened to him mix his stuff, notably Marc Copland's re-recording duo and recordings made in Morocco with Konaté, Errachidi & El Belkani. He lent me incredible microphones, explained how to place them — basically it would have been much harder without him. And then I wondered what format to choose and, like twenty years before, making a CD wasn't very exciting — already done, already depressing. Twenty years ago I had chosen to release Tlön 5's music — then Plaistow's — on the internet for free. There wasn't Spotify yet or even BandCamp. It worked at the time, it was new and exciting. But today it's different again. So we said, hmm... a cassette? After all, there are artists and labels that do little or no CDs, just internet and cassettes. And then it's more resilient — even after thirty years of taking heat and sand in a car, there's still something to listen to, while a CD would have been toast long ago. And then... I had never released a cassette. There you go!
So I released my solo album on my own site with Faircamp, an admirable little software that generates a listening and download site, and I made a run of 100 cassettes. I sold half of them, which isn't bad for an artist without a label and without concerts! If anyone's interested, the link is here: johannbourquenez.com/faircamp/johann-bourquenez-loriol
The best concert of your life?
A great moment of music and piano: listening to Craig Taborn tinker at the piano before his soundcheck for his solo concert at AMR's festival in 2015. I came into the empty hall in the afternoon, he was at the piano, I apologized, he said "no problem" and kept playing — it wasn't fooling around.
The question you would have liked to be asked? And your answer?
— What changed from taking a break from piano practice and learning guitar?
— It allowed me to approach an instrument as a beginner. I got into guitar with enthusiasm, when I had to work on barre chords I struggled, but I learned, when I had to work on major and minor pentatonics, I learned a few positions, and then boom! It became possible to have fun on a blues grid. Going back to piano, I realized that despite a better general technical level, I was less flexible and less relaxed. For example, I hadn't worked on pentatonics systematically. I had routines, things I know how to play and I know will work, and for the rest I felt like I was "pretending," and that this generated a certain anxiety (being found out!).
I sort of accepted going back to piano as a beginner, accepted that there were many things I didn't know very well, or not at all, and that it was possible to learn them by practicing. And that all of this wasn't a shameful problem.
Since then, I've had several interesting conversations on this subject with colleagues. Many, even all musicians go through a moment where concerts pile up and you have to go, you have less time to practice. Then you take shortcuts, crystallize certain techniques, specialize. And then there's a certain social pressure, you don't want to be caught red-handed being mediocre, so avoidance strategies set in. You "muddle through" and stay in your "comfort zone." To get out of there, you have to take a break, have the time and security to ask yourself what you want and what you know how to do, accept yourself as you are and find the courage to start working on new things, even if you feel a bit useless at the beginning. It worked on me — I feel less useless! — and it worked on others. I feel I have a much more relaxed relationship with piano and with music in general. Plus, I enjoy teaching, which wasn't the case before.
And tomorrow?
I've done some improvised sessions with several musicians, notably Raimundo Santander and Massimo Pinca, and I've asked to do a four-concert residency at AMR's basement for this trio — that would be great and we could launch a nice musical project. I continue working at piano to be operational solo, and I have music ideas for different formations, but it's too early to say anything about that!